


Mary Winchester's Bedside Stories

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hallucinations, Moms Are Awesome And Sam Deserves One, Not Necessarily Shippy - Freeform, References to Torture, Sort of Sam Winchester/Castiel, Sort of? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 20:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7772770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni's got Sam, and Sam doesn't care.  He can hold out until Cas comes for him.  But when Cas comes, he doesn't come alone.  It's impossible.  Toni must have given Sam something to make him hallucinate.</p>
<p>Because Dean blew himself up.  And Mary died on the ceiling of his nursery when he was six months old.</p>
<p>(Warning to those who are avoiding S12 spoilers: Part of the basis of this story is something Jared said in an interview.  It's not all that specific a spoiler, but I know some people like to go in completely blind.  (Jared's quote in the beginning notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary Winchester's Bedside Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Semira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semira/gifts).



> SemirahRose on Tumblr: "What about Mary caring for fevered!hallucinating!Sam in s12, and he’s apologizing to her because he doesn’t think she’s real?"
> 
> Combined with Jared at Comicon: "I think in recounting to Mary what's happened in the last thirty-something years of his life, I think he'll learn a lot about himself. He'll realize, like, what he's done." SemirahRose and I agree that Sam realizes the bad things that he's done, so this can really only be Sam realizing the good parts, too.

Sam had been tortured by the best. So he held out well against Toni and her team, or so he’d thought, anyway. He wasn’t sure anymore. Because the rescue team… there was no way they were real. Cas, yes. Cas would be pissed about his banishment and Sam’s subsequent capture and even with his limited powers, he’d find Sam. But he’d brought Dean with him, which was impossible because Dean was dead after blowing himself up to take out Amara. So Dean couldn’t be there, talking to him, getting him untied. And his mother definitely couldn’t be there fighting beside Cas, because she’d been dead for a third of a century.

Sam spent most of the hallucinated trip to the bunker unconscious. When he was conscious, he was curled up in the back seat with his head in Cas’s lap. That’s how he knew it was a hallucination, because if Cas was the only other real person, who was driving the Impala? Cas stroked his hair, and Sam fell back asleep.

The next time he woke up, he was in his room in the Bunker. Allegedly. Mary sat in a chair beside him, watching NetFlix. “You know, Sammy, one of the hardest things about coming back… I feel like I’m living in a Star Trek episode or something. Which I can actually watch, now. I missed some episodes, and it was hard getting to see episodes you missed. And they made entire new series since I died!”

“Yeah, a few. Movies, too.” Sam couldn’t help the smile, but he sobered quickly. “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I should be apologizing to you. I cursed you, and then I left you alone…” Mary shut off her Star Trek and turned to face Sam.

“Sorry for…” What, exactly, was Sam apologizing for? It was so hard to decide where to even start. So he started with the thing he was most certain of. “Dean’s a hero. You should be very proud of him. He’s done some really amazing things over the years. And then there’s me. The screwup. The one who keeps letting his family down.”

Mary chuckled a little. “Well, one thing I know for sure, my boys grew up to love each other. Dean said something very similar.”

“Dean tell you how I started the Apocalypse? Or failed the trials to shut the gates of Hell? Or did he mention how I left him in Purgatory for a year?”

“No, he didn’t tell me any of those. Tell you what, though, do you think you feel up to storytime? You tell me a story, and I tell you one that Dean or Castiel told me while we were looking for you?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” Sam tried to sit up. It didn’t work very well, but with stubborn and determination, he made it pretty close, anyway. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Let’s start with…” Mary giggled. “Starting with the Apocalypse seems like a nice sort of irony, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. So, um. Dean went to Hell to save me, and while he was down there, this demon – Ruby – saved my life. And then convinced me that drinking more demon blood was the answer to my problems, make me strong enough to kill Lilith. Dean tried to stop me, Cas tried to stop me, Chuck tried to warn me… wow. That was God telling me that demon blood was wrong, but the story seemed to be going to a showdown between me and Lilith. I kinda… don’t know what to make of that, now.”

Mary smirked. “Seems like if God really wanted, he could’ve stopped you. Given you better information.”

Fair enough, really. “Yeah, well, I dunno. Anyway, once Dean found out I was drinking demon blood, he put me on lockdown. I escaped, beat the crap out of him, and killed and drank a woman to get enough blood to make me strong enough. That demon got smart, let her host take control, so I had to listen to her scream while I killed her. And I did. And then, it turns out Lilith was the final seal on Lucifer’s cage, killing her was the absolute wrong thing to do at that point, and I did it anyway.”

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That killing Lilith was going to raise Lucifer.”

Sam shook his head. “No, I thought I was stopping her from raising Lucifer. Ruby lied to me. So did the angels. Dean, too. Cas finally broke with the angels and told Dean the truth and tried to get him to stop me, but he was too late.”

Mary nodded. “So, with the information you had available, you made the decision to kill Lilith to save the world. And then discovered you’d started the Apocalypse.”

His mom didn't get it. “I drank a woman’s blood while she screamed. I damn near killed Dean with my fists! I should’ve known…”

“Those were bad, yes. But your story was about how you started the Apocalypse, and that doesn’t really sound like it’s on you. Tell me something. If you’d been working with Dean instead of against him, if it had been Dean with you instead of Ruby when you went after Lilith, would it have made a difference?”

That gave Sam pause, and he had to stop and think for a moment before answering. “No. Not unless it was after Cas’s rebellion, and that was too late.”

Mary reached out and took Sam's hand. “I realize I’m probably about to destroy your image of me as the perfect mother, the one John and Dean sold you, but my hands aren’t clean. I’ve tortured monsters, even people if they were being used as hosts by something. One time, I went too far. The demon I was torturing, we exorcised him, and the host died from the wounds I’d inflicted. And the demon made sure I knew it, too. Dad and Mom both had their stories to share about mistakes they’d made. I never knew John as a hunter, but I’d bet my soul on him screwing up and someone being dead because of it. So yes, you screwed up with that woman you killed, but starting the Apocalypse? Little bit much for you to be claiming credit for.”

Sam huffed. “So is that your counter story? I come from a family history of screwups so it's no surprise that I'm one too?”

“No.” Mary smoothed Sam’s hair back off his forehead. “My stories are the ones Dean and Cas told me, remember? That was the deal.” Mary got up and went to the desk. When she came back, she handed Sam a couple of Tylenol and a glass of water. “You’re feverish. Those bastards let some of your wounds get infected, and put god knows what else into your system.” Toni had explained that a lot of what they were injecting was probably harmless, but it seemed that forcing stuff into Sam’s blood was the most effective torture they had. Which made sense to Sam, given his past. “Take those. Should help with the pain, too.”

“Thanks, mom.” His hallucinations were good. He wondered if Cas had actually rescued him, or if he was going to wake up to find Toni staring at him. Maybe they realized they’d gone too far, letting him get infected. Or there was some weird reaction in something they put in him. Or they’d given him demon blood and didn’t realize he’d start hallucinating if they didn’t keep it up.

“So… let’s stay on theme, shall we?” Mary settled back into her chair as Sam swallowed the pills. “Cas told me this story about what a terrible angel he was, and I made him explain the beginning part. He told me how, with everything against you, running out of options, Heaven and Hell and everything in between breathing down your neck while you tried to avoid Lucifer, you never broke. Not only did you not break, your simple faith in your brother pulled him back when he broke from the pressure.”

“Dean would’ve come around. All I did was…”

“Have faith in a brother who’d just said he didn’t have faith in you. Dean told me that part. And then, you came up with a plan. My baby boy is either the biggest masochist ever created, or one of the strongest and bravest people ever to exist. Maybe both, but Cas and Dean are both convinced of the second one. Because, see, when I asked Castiel how the hell you came to be in Lucifer’s cage for him to fail to get out properly, he told me that you wrested control of your body away from Satan himself and deliberately jumped in, planning on it being forever.”

“That wasn’t brave. That was desperation. We had to get Lucifer back in his cage, or billions of people were going to die. And no one else could come up with any other way to do it.”

“The thing is, Sammy… you had a lot of help in starting the Apocalypse, even granting you the small piece of actually being the one to kill Lilith. Dean and Cas and Bobby Singer could support you, but taking back your body from Lucifer? That was all you. Jumping into the pit? All you. My baby boy saved the world.”

Sam shook his head again. “You’re giving me too much credit. I failed, until Lucifer was about to kill Dean. Had my hand back for the final blow. And Dean wouldn’t give up. He kept talking to me, telling me it was all right, that it was going to be okay, that he was there for me. His faith in me, in that moment, that’s what saved the world.”

“All the faith in the world doesn’t do squat unless you live up to it. All your faith in Dean wouldn’t have mattered if Dean hadn’t found it in himself to change his mind. All Dean's faith in you wouldn't have done anything if you weren't strong enough to save him.”

“Can’t have it both ways, Mom. All the manipulation in the world wouldn’t have mattered if I’d just thought a little more about…”

“Sammy, you’re a hunter. It was a bad way to save the world, but a safe world and a guilty conscience is something a hunter will take any day over a clean conscience and a world going to Hell. How much thinking would it have taken you to realize that Lilith was the last seal?”

“I didn’t…”

“You *couldn’t* know! That’s the point. If someone had given you that critical piece of information and you’d killed Lilith anyway, then you’d have a case. But you killed her because you thought it would save the world.” Mary looked critically at Sam. “Okay. Come here.” Sam was obviously more out of it than he was willing to admit even to himself, because his mother was able to get him lying back down easily. “Sleep.”

Sam squirmed and tried to sit back up. “Slept too much. When I wake up, you won’t be here.”

“I’ll be here, baby. Humor me. Just close your eyes.” Sam obeyed, and was asleep before Mary had even reached “then you can start to make it better.”

 

Mary wasn’t there when he woke up. To be fair, she was there a few minutes later, with a tray holding a bowl of tomato soup, water, and a thermos. “Hey, baby. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine. I don’t…” Sam cut off. This was his mom. If a hallucination of a mom isn’t allowed to baby someone, who is? “Still feverish. Been in a lot worse pain. But I think I’m awake enough that you don’t have to airplane the soup at me.”

Mary pouted. “Aww, I never got to airplane anything at you. Dean, yes. That boy was such a picky eater before you were born!” But Mary helped Sam sit up, and set the tray on his lap. The thermos turned out to be hot chocolate, not coffee, but it was still good.

“Your turn for story time." Mary settled into the chair. "Actually, wait. We talked Apocalypse yesterday, but Dean told me something interesting yesterday. He said that when you guys went after Lucifer, you had to drink a lot of blood.”

“Well, yeah, I needed to strengthen the vessel. Dunno if that helped or hurt my cause in taking control of it, really. But I drank about five gallons of the stuff before we went into the building.” The blood had been cold, and tasted weird from the anticoagulants they'd had to add, and Sam still hated himself for how much he'd wanted it by the end.

“Dean said that you weren’t you after you’d drunk. He says, and Cas backs him up, that the demon blood changes you. The more you drink, the more demonic you act. And you were pretty juiced before you drank that woman, weren’t you? From Ruby’s blood?”

He'd heard the argument before, but he didn't buy it. “It was still me. Still my choice.”

“Do you blame Dean for the things he did while he was a demon? Or under the Mark of Cain?”

“No, of course not. That wasn’t really…”

“Even though he took the mark willingly?”

Sam sighed. “He was so messed up then, because we were fighting and we'd just lost Kevin. And he needed the mark, if he was going to stop Abbadon…”

“You were so messed up then, because you'd lost Dean and then you were fighting with him. And you needed the demon blood, if you were going to stop Lilith…”

Sam shook his head. “It’s not the same, Mom! It’s just… it’s not.”

“The only difference I see is that one was Dean and one was you. Double standards are bad, Sammy.” Mary scooted forward in her chair. “Anyway! Your turn to choose your story. What great failing do you want to tell me about today?”

“How about the time I left Dean in Purgatory?”

“Sure. I haven’t heard the story of how Dean ended up in Purgatory, but Dean told me about leaving Cas there and Cas told me about Dean’s determination to save him extending their stay by months.”

“Okay. So there was this guy, Dick Roman, who was the head of a giant snake. Leviathans. Which is a long story…”

“Cas told me about releasing them from Purgatory. I figured it was connected to them being there.”

“Yeah. With Dick gone, the Leviathans were no longer a threat. So Dean, Cas, me, and a couple others… Kevin and Meg, both dead now… put together a team to take him down. Dean struck the actual death blow, but Cas was close, and got caught in the implosion. They were both taken to Purgatory. Crowley took Meg and Kevin to Hell. I was left alone.”

“Sounds like." Mary took Sam's hand again. "What did you do?”

“I hid my phones in a cabin belonging to someone else we got killed, Rufus Turner…”

“Rufus Turner? Really?" Mary's eyebrows shot off her face. "That man was a paranoid bastard even when I was still in the business. You and Dean worked with Rufus Turner?”

“Yeah, uh, he was an old pal of Bobby’s. Dean’s told you about Bobby, I’m sure. Anyway. I hid my phones in Rufus’s old cabin, along with anything else from hunting, and drove around the country. Then I hit a dog. The vet I took her to guilted me into keeping the dog, I ended up working at the hotel she was staying at, we kinda… fell together.”

“Why didn’t you look for your friends? Try to rescue Kevin from Crowley? Meg I get, she came up a couple times so I know she’s a demon.”

“When an angel dies, it pretty much takes an act of God to bring them back. They don’t have souls to rescue. So as far as I knew, Cas was gone unless God decided to step in. Dean… I should have.”

“Whether you should have or not isn’t the question. The question is why you didn’t.”

“Because… by then, we’d both died a few times, and we were sick of it. We made a promise that the next time, we wouldn’t try to bring each other back, because it always made things worse.”

“So you should have ignored your promise to your brother?”

“Yes! He would’ve ignored it! I know that for a fact, because he did ignore it! He was searching for a way to get me out of the Cage right up until I showed up in his garage after having been back for a year!”

“Why make the promise in the first place, then?”

“Because…” Sam was stumped. He honestly couldn't come up with an answer to that one. “Anyway, I should have looked. At least made sure he was dead and hadn’t just been taken somewhere.”

“Maybe. So it wasn’t the promise, then. Why didn’t you look for your brother?”

“Because I’d promised.”

“And yet you couldn’t give me an answer why you made the promise in the first place. It wasn’t the promise, Sam.”

“It was.” Sam opened his mouth to argue, and Mary shook her head. “Okay. New question: why didn’t you try to save Kevin? You knew where he was and that he shouldn’t be there.”

Sam ducked his head. His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke. “I was lost. I had nowhere to turn. Thirty years old, and it was the first time I’d ever been truly alone. When Dean was in Hell, I had Bobby and later Ruby. When I was at Stanford, I had my friends there, and Dean was never more than a phone call away and I knew it. If I’d needed him, he’d have come. This time… all I had was the Impala. And even that was only after about a month of work rebuilding her.”

“When did you find your way again?”

“I guess with Amelia, I was at least starting to find a way when her husband showed up.”

“Her… husband?”

“Long story, she’d been told he died in Iraq but he was alive. So I left. And then Dean was back, and I guess that’s when I really started to find my way again.”

“Seems to me like you’re guilty about the wrong thing here. You’d promised to let Dean die in peace, and you did, as far as you knew. It’s Kevin you failed.”

“Thanks, Mom. Because I don’t have enough guilt about Kevin.”

“What did you do to Kevin?”

“I killed him.”

Mary let go of Sam's hand to cross her arms over her chest. “You killed him.”

“Well, Gadreel killed him, but he was possessing me at the time.”

“And you feel guilty about what someone hijacking your body did because…”

“Because I see it in my dreams. Because they were my hands. It wasn’t Gadreel that Kevin was looking at, it was me. My hands, my face, the last thing he saw or felt.”

“You think Kevin blames you for Gadreel killing him?”

“No. Kevin’s ghost haunted us for a while – long story, but souls couldn’t get into Heaven. We got to talk to him, and while he blames me and Dean for a lot of things we did wrong, he didn’t blame me for killing him.”

“Then don’t blame yourself. You didn’t do it, so you don’t get the blame.”

“That’s not gonna get the images out of my dreams, Mom.” Sam set aside the now empty bowl of soup. “So what’s your story for the day?

“Cas told me about releasing the Leviathans.”

“Okay…”

“He also told me what he did to you to take you and Dean out of the fight.”

“Yeah, okay, that was bad. But Mom, he’s still the best friend Dean and I have ever had. And we could’ve been much better friends to him back then, and maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so…”

“Sam, hush. You don’t need to defend Cas to me.”

“Just… he really is a great guy, Mom. You need to see that. I need you to see that, because he's family.”

“I do see that. Now let me finish my story. Cas said that when you should have been catatonic, unable to regain consciousness, you fought your way out of that and made a last-ditch effort to stop him. That would have worked if it hadn’t been too late.”

“Translation: I stabbed him in the back, Mom.”

“Not that it matters, I got that it involved killing him. Or as Cas put it… attempting to gank the monster your one-time friend had become. Cas then broke his promise to fix you. And you… you prayed to him. You reached out to your friend, showed faith in him, and brought him home. Got him to try to fix the mistake he’d made. The Leviathans were too good, too slippery, and it killed him, but if it weren’t for you having faith in your friend after he’d betrayed you in just about every way imaginable, it would have been a million times worse as all the souls of Purgatory got free instead of just the Leviathans.”

“Not all the souls in Purgatory are bad. There’s one guy, Benny, Dean loved him like a brother. And I screwed that up. The whole time Benny was topside, he killed exactly one person, and that was my fault. Because I had my head so far up my ass that I couldn’t have faith in Dean’s faith in him.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons. Is that your next story?”

“No, but speaking of Benny, how about the time I gave up on the Trials to close the gates of Hell for good? And in the process, let a Knight of Hell loose, and because I was so weakened, wasn’t able to do a damn thing to help Cas after the angel tablet mess?”

“Cas told me about the angel tablet mess. What, exactly, could you have done if you weren’t weakened?”

“I don’t know! Something. Been there for him so he wouldn’t get duped by Metatron? If I’d finished the Trials, I’d have died, and Dean wouldn’t have tricked me into letting Gadreel come in, which would mean Cas could’ve stayed at the Bunker when he was human. Instead of being thrown out on his own.”

Mary cracked up, a full-body laugh. Sam stared at her quizzically. “Dean really wasn’t exaggerating, was he.”

“Huh?”

“If unnecessary guilt were an Olympic sport, the three of you would be gold, silver, and bronze.”

“Yeah, well, Dean and Cas would be gold and silver, but…”

“No, honey, don’t you dare tell me that your guilt isn’t unnecessary. Some of it, you’ve earned, but there’s a lot of it you’re taking on yourself when you shouldn’t.”

“And there’s a lot… Mom, I should be better than that.”

“There’s something Dean told me about you, and Cas agreed with. All the crap you’ve been through, you still see hope. You still see a light at the end of the tunnel. You still try to find the best solution instead of taking the first one available or the easiest. It doesn’t always work out the way you’d like, but you still have faith. Do you have any idea how proud that makes me? Dean tells me you didn’t learn that from John, and it’s certainly not a Campbell thing. Everything that’s happened to you, and you’re… you’re not a screwup, Sammy. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.” What was the point of fighting a hallucination, anyway? Although he had to admit, this was a lot better than the other times he’d hallucinated his mother. He was not looking forward to waking up in Toni’s dungeon.

 

When Sam woke up the next morning, he felt much better. A part of him was disappointed by that – if he was better, he wouldn’t hallucinate his mom, or Dean. Since he was in the Bunker, he assumed that Cas had been real, at least at some point. So at least when he got out of bed, he wouldn’t have to deal with Toni and her friends.

The shower felt amazing. Getting to brush his teeth, seeing his skin without bruises or cuts, Sam had never taken these things for granted, not since he went to the Cage, but it was a nice reminder just how good it was to be able to take care of himself. He could smell the coffee as he headed to the kitchen – one nice thing about having an angel friend, Cas must have sensed that he was awake and started the coffee maker.

“Sammy!” Sam stopped short. That was Dean’s voice. “Good to see you up and about. Feeling better?”

“How… I thought I was, but…” Sam walked over to Dean and threw his arms around him. “You’re alive.”

“Uh, yeah… never died. Been around the last few days. You knew that.”

“I thought I was hallucinating you. Toni gave me something that made me see things… and I thought you were part of it.”

“Nope. I’m real.”

“Me too.” And Sam let go of his brother and turned and stared in shock. Mary. His mother. Alive, holding out her arms for a hug that Sam gave her as soon as he could move again. “This is weird. You got so tall!”

“You’re real?”

“I’m real. You thought you were talking to yourself the last couple days?”

“It… wouldn’t be the first time.” Sam pulled back. “Not even the first time you told me exactly what I wanted to hear from you.”

“Well, I’ll say it again. I’m proud of you, Sammy. I didn’t want you to grow up to be a hunter, but since you had to, then I’d have wanted you to be the best damn hunter you could be. And knowing that you and Dean stuck together, worked through stuff that would have driven any other partners I know of to go their own ways, that just makes me even prouder.”

Sam blinked back the tears. “Thanks, Mom.”


End file.
